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I couldn't put this book down.
Ms. Miller is a gifted writer and I will look forword to her next book. I'm glad it came out before Christmas as I bought some copies for gifts.

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The book has a big reference table to illustrate how different Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are from small business owners and traditional entrepreneurs, and describes four distinct types of entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. The book also enumerates ten reasons why Silicon Valley has been prosperous.
This is really a good book for a reader to learn what Silicon Valley is like.


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"...
As for that fairy tale she likes to tell
About the frog who scrambled from the well
And gave her back her ball (all dripping wet),
Then turned into a Prince (that's how they met),
We know he's not a Prince; the point is this:
Our poor romantic daughter thinks he is."
Some of the takes are very funny, but nearly always disquieting. (There's a poem based on "Old Mother Hubbard," from her dog's point of view - sounds goofy but it's utterly heart-rending.) I re-read the poems often, and thoroughly enjoy them. Recommended!


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Yes, it was interesting and yes, it was fun, but man! were my eyes opened as to how much I had to learn about the sagas and about the culture within which they were written.
There are two main reasons to read this book. First, to learn history. The history of ninth to fourteenth century Iceland is incredible, and the culture fascinating. Theirs was a culture that knew no central or even local government, no law enforcement infrastructure, and no arms control. And yet the Icelanders developed a complex system of law, essentially codifying the blood feud (which tradition still governs dispute resolution in places like Afghanistan and rural Macedonia), according to which civil injustice could be roughly corrected. Their example has much to teach us about human nature unadulterated by the State.
Second, Bloodtaking is an unparalleled gateway into the sagas as literature. Despite my intimate familiarity with every line of, for example, Hrafnkel's saga, until I read Miller's book I had only the most inadequate appreciation for how tightly it is constructed, how elegantly and efficiently it was drafted. The sagas are only vaguely comparable to the very best English-language short stories; the skill that went into them is comparable to that of a Dante or a Shakespeare.
A modern reader is not culturally prepared to receive the sagas as they would have been by a medieval Icelander. Miller's book provides the small set of cultural factoids that create relevance where otherwise detail might seem pointless or obscure, and reveals the saga-writers' penchant for humorous understatement and emphasis by ellipse. Armed with a relatively small set of cultural facts and with an eye for a small set of saga tropes, the reader has access to a whole new literary world.
Whatever your bent, Bloodtaking makes for fascinating reading.

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